Michael Portillo Biography

Michael Portillo ( Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo) a British journalist, broadcaster, and former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister of the Conservative Party. He is famous for presenting Great British Railway Journeys and Great Continental Railway Journeys. Additionally, he served as MP for Enfield Southgate (1994-1997) and Kensington and Chelsea (1999-2005).

Michael Portillo Age

Portillo was born on 26 May 1953, in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England.

Michael Portillo Great American Railway Journeys

He is the writer and presenter of a BBC travel documentary series Great American Railroad Journeys. Using a 1979 edition of Appleton’s Guidebook on U.S and Canadian railroads, Portillo travels through the U.S. mostly by train, through sometimes using other forms of transport where possible. During his journeys, he makes stops to learn how places, events, and people and 19th-century railroads shaped the development of the country into a global superpower.

Michael Portillo on Brexit

Portillo backed Brexit but also shared the opinion that the 2016 Brexit vote is held in the British system, where Parliament is sovereign “absolutely does not fit with our system” and that “parliament has the right to interpret” the result.

Michael Portillo Politics

From 1981-1983 he worked for Kerr McGee Oil (UK) Ltd. He contested the seat of the Birmingham Perry Bar in the 1983 election. Michael returned to politics as a special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Nigel Lawson) and won the by-election in Enfield Southgate in December 1984, triggered by the assassination of Sir Anthony Berry MP in the Brighton bombing.

In 1986 he entered the cabinet and remained a member until 1997. He was a whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Social Security, Minister of State for Transport, Minister of State for Local Government and Inner Cities; and as Minister of Cabinet, he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Jobs, and Secretary of State for Defence.

Michael returned to Kerr McGee as an advisor following his electoral defeat in 1997. Then he turned to journalism, too. He wrote of traveling on the Santiago Way as a pilgrim and of serving as a porter at the hospital. He had a column regularly in The Scotsman. He had a three-part series about Portillo’s progress in politics for Channel 4 and a program in BBC2’s series Great Railway Journeys, which was partly a biography.

In a by-election held in Kensington and Chelsea in November 1999, Michael was re-elected to Parliament and was the Exchequer’s Shadow Chancellor February 2000-September 2001. After the electoral defeat of the Conservatives in 2001, Michael unsuccessfully challenged the Party leadership. Michael left the Chamber of Commons in 2005.

Michael Portillo BBC2

He has made a number of television programs for BBC2 including Art that shook the world: Richard Wagner’s Ring, Portillo in Euroland, Elizabeth I in the series Great Britons, When Michael Portillo became a single mum, Portillo Goes Wild in Spain and The Science of Killing. There followed documentaries on the unburied bodies from the Spanish Civil War and on Guantanamo Bay.

In 2010 BBC Radio 4 carried his 3-part series “Democracy on Trial”. For BBC4 he has made several series of Dinner with Portillo, a discussion program, and in 2008 The Lady’s not for Spurning (about Margaret Thatcher’s legacy). Since 2006 he has been on The Moral Maze team on BBC Radio 4.

In 2003 he began the weekly political discussion program This Week on BBC1 with fellow presenters Andrew Neil and Diane Abbott MP. He did 100 programs for BBC2 in the Great British Railway Journeys and Great Continental Railway Journeys show. He was a weekly columnist on The Sunday Times for six years and was The New Statesman’s theater critic from 2004-2006.

In 2008, he chaired the judges of the Man Booker prize, while in 2011 he chaired the Art Fund Prize and in 2012 he chaired the committee recommending grants for an endowment to arts and heritage institutions under the government’s Catalyst program.

Michael was a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia from 1998 to 2012. He sat on of the Board of BAE Systems plc from 2002 to 2006 and of Kerr McGee Corporation during 2006. He is the founder of DebRA, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), the national charity working on behalf of people with genetic skin blistering disorder. He was British Chairman for the 2004-2008 British-Spanish Tertulias.

Michael Portillo Net Worth

Portillo has an estimated Net Worth of $9 Million.

Michael Portillo Books

• Great American Railroad Journeys (2017)
• Democratic Values and the Currency: A Lecture Given to the Institute of Economic Affairs at Church House,
• Westminster, on Wednesday 14 January 1998 (1998)
• The Blue Horizon (1993)
• A Vision for the 1990s (1992)
• The Ghost of Toryism Past: The Spirit of Conservatism Future (1997)
• Beyond New Labour: The 1998 Swinton Lecture (1999)
• Portillo?’s Hidden History of Britai (2018)
• The Green Line: The Division of Cyprus: a Photographic Record (1998)
• The Economics of John Smith (1992

Michael Portillo Height and Weight

Michael stands tall at a height of 5′ 11″ (1.81 m) and has an average body weight.

Michael Portillo Education

Michael enrolled at grammar school, Harrow County, and went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class degree in History.

Michael Portillo Family

Michael was born the only child in a small-sized family in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England. He was born to Luis Gabriel Portillo was a refugee who had come to Britain at the end of the Spanish Civil War and Cora Waldegrave Blyth de Portillo, was brought up in Fife and met her husband while she was an undergraduate at Oxford. Additionally, his father was a staunch Catholic who served as head of the London Diplomatic Office of the Government in Exile in 1972. His father passed on in 1993 aged 86 years.

Michael Portillo Wife

Portillo is married to his Wife Carolyn Claire Eadie. The duo got married on 12 Feb 1982 in a private blissful wedding ceremony attended by close friends and family. The couple first met when they were at school where Carolyn served as a chartered accountant and ‘headhunter’ with Spencer Stuart Associates. Portillo and his wife Carolyn Claire do not have any children from their four-decade marriage.